Once in charge of Navy facilities across the Southwest, Rear Adm. Len Hering helped the Navy learn how to literally find gold in waste and take toxic pilings out of the San Diego Bay.

When he retired after 32 years, he felt he still had environmental lessons to teach.

Hering went from being “Navy mayor of San Diego” to leading the University of San Diego’s sustainability efforts, helping to save water, make electricity from the sun and, soon, get heat out of the ground.

He picked a university after leaving the Navy to encourage a new generation not to follow in the steps of his boomer peers.

“If this nation does not wake up to our need to control our energy consumption, and change the behaviors of my generation, the security and stability of this country is in jeopardy,” he said in a recent interview on USD’s Linda Vista campus.

It’s a concept the Navy has bought into. Its higher-ups say getting off petroleum is a matter of national security.

As Commander, Navy Region Southwest, Hering was responsible for making sure that Navy facilities in California and nearby states provided everything servicemen and women needed to get the job done.

For example, that meant dealing with garbage.

“There is a cost associated with waste,” Hering said. “Everything you divert from the waste stream that can be recycled has value.”

To get the most out of recycling, it was important to look at the cardboard, aluminum and other seemingly throwaway materials as commodities.

To wring the most value, Hering cut out middlemen and made deals with recycling companies that could pull ships up to the pier and take the Navy’s cardboard directly.

Gold in computers and electronics was so valuable it made sense to strip it out and sell it rather than pass it on as so-called “e-waste” at pennies a pound.

And in the San Diego Bay, the Navy was replacing creosote-covered pilings every year to year and a half. That was expensive, and also let the chemicals from the coating seep into the water. The Navy found that pilings made from recycled plastic milk jugs last 25 years and aren’t toxic.

On retiring from the Navy in 2009, Hering agreed to take the reins as the executive in charge of making sure USD students, professors and researchers get what they need.

Part of the deal was that he would look for ways of doing it with his green philosophy. His title, vice president for business services and administration, doesn’t sound like he’s the green czar, but that’s his goal.

By showing how things can be done, he hopes that no matter what USD grads do in their careers, they’ll look for ways to do it in an environmentally friendly way. “If you start to establish a sustainable core to education, where students learn in all disciplines the issues of sustainability, they start to ask the questions,” he said.

“So then, when they get out in the work force, they’ll ask their employers, ‘Why don’t you do it this way?’ ”

The hilltop campus, with its manicured lawns and mix of buildings old and new, offers an opportunity to show that finding ways to save energy, reduce water use and produce less garbage doesn’t have to be ugly.

Computer-controlled sprinklers mean that the lawns remain green, but the university has saved 3 million gallons of water in the last year.

New buildings can be designed from the start to use less energy and operate more efficiently.

Retrofitting costs more, but there are opportunities even there.

The university recently changed its urinals so they use a pint of water to flush rather than a gallon.

Hering is also proud of the recent installation of 1.24 megawatts of solar power on rooftops around campus.

The panels are not visible. That would be out of character with the school’s Spanish-style architecture, but they’re saving the school money.

A private company found the financing and installed them and sells the power at a discount to what San Diego Gas & Electric would charge. Eventually, the school plans to buy the system outright.

That system, though, brings up a sore point.

The university has the capacity, both in its rooftops and how much electricity it uses, for three times more solar power. But the way that incentives and utility charges work means that a system that big doesn’t pan out economically.

That’s in part because the school is served by one electric meter, and there are limits to how much solar can be installed by any given customer. So Hering is exploring splitting up the campus into three accounts.

The next big project will involve going down, not up, for energy.

“The principle is pretty simple,” Hering said. “There’s a geothermal layer, about 9 feet below the surface. It’s pretty constant. It’s about 70 degrees. … You can take advantage of that for cooling or heating, depending on the time of the year.”

In the next few years, school officials are planning to convert the main avenue through the western part of the campus into a pedestrian plaza.

Hering wants to install a network of pipes that will be able to tap into that constant temperature to make nearby classrooms, offices and dorm rooms comfortable.

Well, he wants someone else to install it, just like someone else installed the solar panels.

“They would pay the costs; we would buy the energy it produces,” he said.